Speaker Biography      

Eben Peck

Executive Vice President, Advocacy, American Society of Travel Advisors

Since 2017, Eben Peck has served as Executive Vice President, Advocacy at the American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA), where is he responsible for ASTA's work to advocate for the travel agency community at all levels of government, within the travel industry and before the traveling public. This includes management of ASTA's Government Affairs, Industry Affairs, Communications, Legal and Research functions, and ranges from day-to-day association management to federal/state government affairs to interaction with national and trade media, travel suppliers and industry groups to content for ASTA's annual conference and other events.

From 2012 to 2017, he served as ASTA's Vice President, Government Affairs and Senior Vice President, Government & Public Affairs, with a heavy focus on the Society's core advocacy functions – federal and state lobbying, regulatory compliance and ASTA's political action committee. Accomplishments of note during this period include legislative and regulatory "wins" that saved the industry an estimated $563 million in new taxes, fees and other costs and more than quadrupling annual PAC receipts to over $230,000.

Peck joined ASTA after seven years with the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB), where he served most recently as Senior Director, Government Affairs. At CPB, Peck was the primary liaison between CPB and the federal government, responsible for CPB's appropriations requests; managing relationships with government relations offices of other national public broadcasting organizations; and briefing the CPB Board of Directors on federal developments.

Prior to joining CPB, Eben served for five years on the staff of U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME), acting as the Senator's policy advisor and representative for several legislative issues, including transportation, homeland security, labor and appropriations.

He graduated from Colby College in Waterville, Maine with a BA in History in 1998 and in 2009 earned his Master of Arts in Government degree from the Johns Hopkins University, with his thesis on Congressional earmarks earning honors as well as the William F. Clinger, Jr., Award for Assessing a Topic in Institutional or Representative Government Using Original Research and Displaying Superior Writing.

He lives in Alexandria, Virginia, with his wife Colette, daughter Lucy and son Stuart.